US Vice President Richard Cheney has considered provoking an exchange of military strikes between Iran and Israel in order to give the United States a pretext to attack Iran, Newsweek magazine reported in its Monday issue. But the weekly said the steady departure of neoconservatives from the administration over the past two years had helped tilt the balance away from war. One official who pushed a particularly hawkish line on Iran was David Wurmser, who had served since 2003 as Cheney's Middle East adviser, the report said. A spokeswoman at Cheney's office confirmed to Newsweek that Wurmser left his position...